Articles

bloomberg.com
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Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., among the world's biggest traders of credit derivatives, disclosed to shareholders that they have sold protection on more than $5 trillion of debt globally. Just don't ask them how much of that was issued by Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, known as the GIIPS.

bloomberg.com
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May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Nothing in John Whitehead's 37-year career at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. prepared him for the excesses of today's Wall Street. ``I'm appalled at the salaries,'' the retired co-chairman of the securities industry's most profitable firm said in an interview this week.

bloomberg.com
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(Bloomberg) -- John Whitehead, the Wall Street banker who led Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s first forays overseas in the 1970s and 1980s and later oversaw the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, has died. He was 92. He died today at his home, according to a person close to his family.

bloomberg.com
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Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the top-ranked takeover adviser so far this year, hired Paul Parker to be a co-chairman of its mergers and acquisitions group less than three months after he left Barclays Plc. (BARC) Parker, 51, had served as global head of finance at London-based Barclays before being named to run the worldwide mergers and acquisitions in October.

bloomberg.com
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U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's loss in Virginia's Republican primary last night raises concerns about the future of political compromise, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said. "It was stunning," Blankfein said in a television interview with CNBC today.

bloomberg.com
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The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is examining whether Wall Street firms overcharge investors on some bond trades and whether they unfairly allocate new corporate debt issues to reward certain clients. Richard Ketchum, the chairman and chief executive officer of Wall Street's self-regulator, said Finra is looking at trading data to see if brokers sometimes earn unusually large profits on bond trades, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

bloomberg.com
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Rising bond yields are typically indicators of stronger economic growth and higher profits for banks. That might not be the case this time, as a 30-year bull market in U.S. government debt shows signs of coming to an end. Higher long-term interest rates can discourage mortgage lending and cause losses in the securities portfolios of banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co.

bloomberg.com
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CIT Group Inc. (CIT) Chief Executive Officer John Thain, whose commercial lending firm has drawn takeover speculation, said the logic of selling to a larger bank is "obvious." "The big banks are awash in deposits and they can't generate attractive assets," Thain said today in a Bloomberg Television interview with Erik Schatzker and Sara Eisen.

bloomberg.com
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BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world's largest asset manager, stands to benefit as banks shrink their market-making role in over-the-counter fixed-income trading, Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said. Higher bid-ask spreads raise the cost of trading and thus increase the appeal of BlackRock's exchange-traded funds, said Fink, speaking with Deutsche Bank AG (DBK)'s co-CEO Anshu Jain on stage at a conference in New York hosted by the German company.